Most Over/Underrated Class?

[Petrocorus]

I do. In 2nd edition the Ranger was a worse Fighter that leveled up slower for basically no gain. Favored Enemy? Minor bonus.
3rd-3.5, Compared to a Fighter it has less proficiencies, less hit points, narrow selection of conditional bonus feats that specifically forced you to stick to Light Armor, and a Animal Companion that you acquired later than a Druid and leveled up half as fast. So you ended up a bad combination of Fighter/Druid.

I hadn't played a lot of ADD2. In ADD1, the Ranger was fine IIRC.

For 3.5, i would disagree. I've been on this board since 2010, i spend quite some time that year and the following one on the 3.5 forum, and i never saw the Ranger getting the despise that the Paladin, the Monk, the Warlock or even the sometimes the Rogue got.

Concerning its class features, the light armor proficiency was not that big a problem once you had WBL. Indeed less HP but more skill points and spellcasting without a spells known limit. And the spell list was not awesome but not bad either.

Your points about the Animal Companion and the bonus feats are perfectly true. But this is why the Ranger was much better out of core. They had a significant number of ACF to improve them.
With the Wildshape ACF, the Arcane Hunter ACF, some specific feats, Dragon Magazine's feats for multiclassed animal companion, the Mystic Ranger variant class (with spells up to level 6 IIRC), the Sword of the Arcane Order feat, + some PrC combos (and access to arcane ones), the Ranger was much better than the fighter after level 4.

5th edition its the same problem. ..... a Valor Bard can replace the whole Ranger class.

On the 5E Ranger, i completely agree. I made this point myself more than once.